A large con­tainer with ver­bena, pelargo­nium and as a dra­matic touch, a fuzzy foliage specimen.

1. Soil & Mulch. It’s best to use a pro­fes­sional pot­ting mix rather than actual soil—never use soil right out of the gar­den. The lighter pro­fes­sional pot­ting mixes give excel­lent root sta­bil­ity and allow for lots of air around grow­ing roots. Promix is a good vari­ety, but there are other mixes that con­tain per­lite for drainage and some peat. Once planted, mulch the soil on top of the pots to con­serve mois­ture, about an inch will do. If soil becomes bone dry it stresses plants out—especially on a very hot, sunny day. Stick your fin­ger through the mulch to see how wet the soil is to know when to water.

2. Use the biggest pots avail­able. From a prac­ti­cal stand­point, the big­ger the bet­ter when it comes to con­tain­ers. Large pots dry out more slowly and keep roots cooler, so less stress on the plants. Bigger pots make water­ing less of an issue: No mat­ter how cute a series of small terra cotta pots look on a win­dowsill, unless you are pre­pared to stand there with a hose on the hottest days, it’s often a  death sen­tence for plants. (Unless they are suc­cu­lents and cac­tus.) Make sure all pots have holes for water drainage, by the way.

3. Position your pots close to a hose, or have a big water­ing can. It sounds ridicu­lously obvi­ous, but more plants have died because the owner was too busy to run and get a hose coiled up way at the end of the gar­den. With a con­ve­niently placed hose, water­ing can be done in a mat­ter of min­utes, on your way to some­where else. Mine often call to me as I’m walk­ing to the car, and I can quickly squirt some water at them. It’s quick and easy. Your suc­cess increases by mak­ing it as easy as pos­si­ble for your­self to do the Do Things. Get a large size water­ing can if you don’t have a hose nearby, not too big that your arms are falling off, but not too small either, so you don’t have to make so many trips.

Sample of the inter­est­ing shapes and colours of pots avail­able, these are from Fiesta Gardens.

4. Choose drought hardy plants. As far as flow­ers, gera­ni­ums (tech­ni­cally Pelargoniums) are the old standby, they can take a lot of heat and drought. There are some great new hybrids out now, with inter­est­ing leaf var­ie­ga­tion and shapes. Some are snobby about gera­ni­ums, think­ing them too com­mon, but I love them. (I always think of the lovely effect of a sin­gle pot of gera­ni­ums on a win­dow sill in Paris.) Casading gera­ni­ums are par­tic­u­larly drought tol­er­ant. Other drought hardy annu­als are ver­bena, nas­tur­tium, por­tu­laca, cos­mos, scav­e­ola, cleome, and butterly-attracting lan­tana. Petunias can with­stand a bit of drought, but if they are let dry out too many times, they will suf­fer. You can grow peren­ni­als, like sedum, in pots as well, but the flow­er­ing sea­son is shorter. You can mix edi­bles and flow­ers in a con­tainer, but make sure they all have the same level of drought tolerance.

5. Fertilize and reju­ve­nate. Every two weeks, give your con­tain­ers an addi­tion of organic fer­til­izer, like fish or sea­weed fer­til­izer that you mix with water. Rejuvenate means cut­ting plants back part way through the sea­son when they start to look leggy, like petu­nias, or vio­las. Also, many plants need dead­head­ing: tak­ing off the old flow­ers to clean the plant, and also to stop it from mak­ing seeds. You want plant energy to go to flow­ers, not mak­ing seeds. New growth will be spurred and your con­tainer will have a new lease on life. If any­thing looks bedrag­gled, you can pull it out and pop in a small pot of some­thing new and fresh. Fiesta Gardens has plant mate­r­ial right through the sea­son, so check there for refills.